{"id":1815,"date":"2015-11-30T23:38:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T23:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skyswitch.com\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2021-09-08T23:21:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T23:21:56","slug":"polycom-mitel-merger-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/blog\/polycom-mitel-merger-horizon\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Polycom-Mitel Merger on the Horizon?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An interesting article on CRN &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crn.com\/slide-shows\/networking\/300078960\/crn-exclusive-mitel-ceo-talks-possible-polycom-mitel-merger-ma-strategy.htm?itc=refresh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mitel CEO Talks Possible Polycom-Mitel Merger, M&amp;A Strategy<\/a> &#8211; quotes Mitel CEO Richard McBee as stating that a shareholder with a large stake in both companies is pushing them to explore a&nbsp;merger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t as yet have an opinion about the end result of such a merger, but the concept of a union&nbsp;makes some sense when you consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Both companies have suffered from&nbsp;lackluster financial results &nbsp;(<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/mitel-networks-reports-3q-loss-132745812.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mitel<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/polycom-declares-3q15-results-misses-190847210.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Polycom<\/a>)<\/li><li>It makes sense for Polycom to be aligned with a platform provider such as Mitel given that:\n<ul>\n<li>Both companies invested heavily in video, and are&nbsp;suffering from flagging interest in video conferencing gateway solutions (Vidtel veteran Scott Wharton believes that<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/death-video-conferencing-interoperability-scott-wharton?trk=prof-post\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> the market for video conferencing has moved past dedicated gear<\/a> and is all about OTT apps running on COTS hardware)<\/li>\n<li>Industry observers continue to herald the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/death-ip-deskphone-jeff-dworkin?trk=prof-post\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">death of the deskphone<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li><li>Privately held Yealink continues to eat into Polycom&#8217;s market share&nbsp;with successful copycat&nbsp;products at lower price points<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Food for thought&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting article on CRN &#8211; Mitel CEO Talks Possible Polycom-Mitel Merger, M&amp;A Strategy &#8211; quotes Mitel CEO Richard McBee as stating that a shareholder with a large stake in both companies is pushing them to explore a&nbsp;merger. I don&#8217;t as yet have an opinion about the end result of such a merger, but the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyswitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}